Tuesday, December 29, 2009

About a year ago, I studied the feasibility of bus/bike lanes for downtown Baltimore to improve bus reliability and bicycle safety. It was one of my favorite projects as we studied downtown traffic and the potential benefits of reducing conflicts for bus operations. There was early discussion of doing painted bus lanes, but it looks like they finished without adding the pavement color. The video has good feedback from bus riders, hopefully they will study whether the bus operations actually improves with the project.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

We had a visit from the Oregon Traffic Control Devices Committee (OTCDC) to Portland to review our operation of the Bicycle Signals we have at N Interstate and Oregon Avenue and the HAWK (High Intensity Pedestrian Activated WalK) signals, which are now being called Pedestrian Hybrid Beacons. I was fortunate to have Paul Zebell conduct some of the presentation out in the field, there is a considerable amount of history that's been involved with the signals. These innovative designs have been the subject of a Federal Highway Administration Experimental Evaluation because we have used a new indication that hasn't been included in the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices. We had a large group at the signals with engineers from Salem, Marion County, Springfield, Eugene, and points in between. ODOT engineers have been supportive of our project, but there are some details to work out related to how we operate the signals.

The striping is important as well and the sign that we put up adjacent to the signal was used to explain the indication and the detection since it is one of the first one you'll see.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

I posted a picture of someone that did this in Copenhagen last year and have a friend that brought their tree home via xtracycle and thought that was just a one in a kind. Low and behold, we come home and our neighbor (I did not put him up to this) has gone to the local tree lot and arrives back with this configuration.